What is CVE-2026-72818?
The URLS regular expression in nltk/tokenize/casual.py, compiled into TweetTokenizer.WORD_RE and applied by TweetTokenizer.tokenize, contains a naked-domain branch whose domain-label prefix [a-z0-9]+(?:[.\-][a-z0-9]+)* is unbounded. Input consisting of many alternating label separators can be partitioned in exponentially many ways, and because the branch also requires a trailing top-level domain that such input never supplies, the engine explores those partitions before failing at each offset. A few kilobytes of input therefore consumes seconds to minutes of single-threaded CPU, and the HANG_RE substitution performed before matching does not collapse the pattern. TweetTokenizer is intended for tokenizing untrusted social-media text, so any service that applies it, or the module-level casual_tokenize, to submitted text can be stalled per request without authentication. Version 3.10.1 bounds the label repetition.
The record classifies CVE-2026-72818 under weakness class CWE-1333. Its CVSS v3 base vector states that the flaw is reachable remotely over the network, needs no prior authentication, needs no user interaction, and has high impact on availability. 1 affected-product entry is recorded, across 1 vendor, listed below. The identifier was first published 46 days ago.
Severity and exploitation probability
- CVSS v3.1 base score
- 7.5 — HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - CVSS v4.0 base score
- 8.7
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N - EPSS (FIRST)
- 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 41.5% of all scored CVEs
- CISA KEV
- Not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog
- Threadlinqs priority
- 5.4/10 — a Threadlinqs composite of the CVSS base score, the EPSS percentile and public exploit availability
- Published
- 2026-08-20, last modified 2026-08-21
Is CVE-2026-72818 being exploited?
It currently carries a trending score of 40 in the Threadlinqs vulnerability feed.
Affected products and versions
- nltk: nltk
How to fix CVE-2026-72818
No vendor patch reference has been recorded for CVE-2026-72818 in the tracked sources. Follow the references below for a fix, and treat the products listed above as exposed until the vendor states otherwise.
Threat activity tracking CVE-2026-72818
No threat campaign in the Threadlinqs corpus currently references CVE-2026-72818, in its CVE list or as an indicator. The linkage is recomputed from the live corpus on every daily ingest, so this section fills in as soon as a tracked campaign cites the identifier.
Sources
Enriched from CVE.org, FIRST EPSS. Last verified by Threadlinqs on .